Obnoxiously loud bass in large enclosure - What subs?

[Mark the Red]

Hello all, this is sort of a continuation of the thread here.

Long story short, finally convinced him after much haggling to build a large box in the back of his Tahoe. We managed to move his work stuff around to build a 4' x 2' x 1' box not an inch more. Basically he wants the loudest and most obnoxiously ridiculous bass output possible in said space. The amp is a sundown 2500w here

Here is my preliminary design of the box. He really wants sealed, but with this size box available I am sure ported is way to go. Basically its a dual chambered sub box of approximately 3.2 to 3.4 cu.ft. each depending on ported or sealed. Haven't had time to model this in bass box, but did some pretty detailed calcs with autocad and attached it here. Thought maybe you pros could save me some time by narrowing down the subs to model. Subs will be playing 32hz to 63hz range +/- 5 hz on the high side.

I have no experience with trapped horn or bandpass setups, but I'd like to make the box simpler to build if possible.

Right now I am leaning towards this sub Dayton 12" HO DVC link because its dual voice coils allow me to get a net 1 ohm load on the amp. I've heard the Dayton HF is better in a larger box, but it appears they don't make a DVC model of this sub. Is the box too big for the 12" Dayton HO? Thanks.

[jim85iroc]

The loudest possible outcome is going to be achieved by determining the frequency where the vehicle's transfer function is highest, and then building a ported box tuned to that frequency. It'll sound like smack, but it'll thump hard. In a tahoe, I'd expect this to be somewhere around 50hz, but doing some digging online will get you the specific info you need. Moving the box & specifically the woofers as far to the back of the vehicle as possible will provide the most output.

[joeybutts]

Stupid loud is ported and slightly below the vehicle resonant frequency, like jim said, and using a huge port area......

[pypes]

3 cubes for a 12 is quite a bit - will allow you to allocate a lot of port area. If you're going with the sundown amp, have you looked at the sundown subs? They make some fine subs that will probably be better suited for what you're doing than the reference subs as you've got 1000+ watts for each sub and most auto subs are going to have much more excursion capability than the reference series subs. Look at sundown, RE, DC, FI, etc.

I'd probably either get a pair of 12" FI BTLs or a pair of sundown 12" Icons.

All of those brands, except RE (which FI I believe is owned by the person who used to own RE so you could argue it is, lol) are available on or through the SSA page you listed and they all have outstanding reviews and make fine products. You also have SKAR audio (which is new, I don't know much about them) and incriminator audio and ascendent audio, which aren't new but I haven't heard or seen any of their products myself, though they have great reviews as well.

[Mark the Red]

50Hz. Sheesh, thats terrible. For the sake of common decency to the general public, I'm gonna lie to him, and tune the box to 30hz.

Couldn't get rid of a floating point error in WinISD when I tried to model the dayton 12's or 10's, but here's my modelling of the vented (chebysev) versus sealed in the box shown above with the JL W3.

I noticed that two woofers in a box twice the size model the exact same as 1 woofer in a box exactly half the size. Not sure if this is true realistically and maybe a limitation of the math behind the software. I'm not qualified to answer that. But what you would recommend to build? two chambers or 1 really big chamber.

My noob questions must be frustrating to you pro's but I tried to do as much homework as possible before posting here.

[joeybutts]

Some other obnoxiously loud sub companies

Digital Designs
Soundsplinter
DC Audio
TC Sounds
RD audio
SSA
Exodus

And with the power you have on hand, most of these companies have one sub that will take it and laugh if used properly....

[joeybutts]

Adding drivers will increase SPL but not by as much as common thought would believe.....

[Mark the Red]

3 cubes for a 12 is quite a bit - will allow you to allocate a lot of port area. If you're going with the sundown amp, have you looked at the sundown subs? They make some fine subs that will probably be better suited for what you're doing than the reference subs as you've got 1000+ watts for each sub and most auto subs are going to have much more excursion capability than the reference series subs. Look at sundown, RE, DC, FI, etc.

I'd probably either get a pair of 12" FI BTLs or a pair of sundown 12" Icons.

All of those brands, except RE (which FI I believe is owned by the person who used to own RE so you could argue it is, lol) are available on or through the SSA page you listed and they all have outstanding reviews and make fine products. You also have SKAR audio (which is new, I don't know much about them) and incriminator audio and ascendent audio, which aren't new but I haven't heard or seen any of their products myself, though they have great reviews as well.

Not set on any particular sub, and I don't have to run these at 1 ohm amp load. With this big a box, I'm not sure 1 ohm is necessary. 2 ohm's will be plenty on that amp (400w a sub shouldn't be too much for a 12" sub). I've heard great things about Sundown too, but the guy who owns this prefers to stick with more well known brands.

[Mark the Red]

Adding drivers will increase SPL but not by as much as common thought would believe.....

Yeah, I'd love to put a 15" in there but the sub has to face vertically or near to it. He doesnt want it to come over the rear bench seat for visibility reasons. I could make it work, but will I have too big a box for a single 15" even ported?

[pypes]

Not set on any particular sub, and I don't have to run these at 1 ohm amp load. With this big a box, I'm not sure 1 ohm is necessary. 2 ohm's will be plenty on that amp (400w a sub shouldn't be too much for a 12" sub). I've heard great things about Sundown too, but the guy who owns this prefers to stick with more well known brands.

Sundown is well known among people who compete. So what does he consider well known? That's a pretty subjective term when you're talking about specialized equipment and the companies that make it. I don't think you'd find many people in car audio who think dayton reference series is more well known than sundown.

And please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that the dayton equipment is bad - I actually just bought two of the 10" reference subs to put in my car as soon as the snow melts - but I'm going to be putting them in the rear deck baffled IB with very low power (like 150 watts per sub). So it's a completely different application.

Going with one sub that can handle it would be another option. Slapping that amp on a DD 12 in a big box would be a fine solution.

And if he really wants obnoxiously loud and you want to keep the subs protected from tools and cargo, build him an Auto tuba - you can find the designs on Bill Fitzmaurices site.

[joeybutts]

You will be hard pressed to find a 15" subwoofer from a real reputable company that will be in a ported enclosure smaller than 2 cubes, but most will want to be right around the enclosure size you are looking at...

For instance, a DD Audio 3515e 15" subwoofer wants approx 4 cubes NOT including the 64 sq in of port area...... that's a pretty large box....

[pypes]

Have you considered electrical upgrades as well? If he's serious about getting loud he's probably going to want to beat on this thing a lot. A 2500 watt amp requires some serious electrical support - as the adage goes it takes power to make power. I got away with just having an extra battery in the back for about 2000watts of amps but it's because I rarely ran the system hard, and when I would turn it up for a bit it was readily apparent the load it was putting on the electrical system (head light dim, voltage drop, etc.).

Running heavy guage wire, upgrading body, chassis, engine grounds, getting good batteries and a higher amperage alternator would be important if he wanted to use all of that amp on a regular basis.

[joeybutts]

Sundown is well known among people who compete. So what does he consider well known? That's a pretty subjective term when you're talking about specialized equipment and the companies that make it. I don't think you'd find many people in car audio who think dayton reference series is more well known than sundown.

And please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that the dayton equipment is bad - I actually just bought two of the 10" reference subs to put in my car as soon as the snow melts - but I'm going to be putting them in the rear deck baffled IB with very low power (like 150 watts per sub). So it's a completely different application.

Going with one sub that can handle it would be another option. Slapping that amp on a DD 12 in a big box would be a fine solution.

And if he really wants obnoxiously loud and you want to keep the subs protected from tools and cargo, build him an Auto tuba - you can find the designs on Bill Fitzmaurices site.

In agreement.

When you start to play with the really nice sub companies, you start to forget about companies like Kenwood, Pioneer, Kicker, etc when it comes to subwoofers.....

[pypes]

Btw, I just modeled the SSA Icon 12 in your box dimensions and it looks good ported to low 30s (a nice hump in the mid to upper thirties to low 40s which will make it sound louder to him - pretty common in car audio as it emphasizes the region rap tends to beat at).

[joeybutts]

Have you considered electrical upgrades as well? If he's serious about getting loud he's probably going to want to beat on this thing a lot. A 2500 watt amp requires some serious electrical support - as the adage goes it takes power to make power. I got away with just having an extra battery in the back for about 2000watts of amps but it's because I rarely ran the system hard, and when I would turn it up for a bit it was readily apparent the load it was putting on the electrical system (head light dim, voltage drop, etc.).

Running heavy guage wire, upgrading body, chassis, engine grounds, getting good batteries and a higher amperage alternator would be important if he wanted to use all of that amp on a regular basis.

You may also want to add a second battery depending on the vehicle.....

EDIT: oops, I can't read.....good call on the electrical pypes....

[Mark the Red]

Sundown is well known among people who compete. So what does he consider well known? That's a pretty subjective term when you're talking about specialized equipment and the companies that make it.

Hey whoa. Lets back this train up. I'm not $hitting on sundown in any way shape or form. Go sundown.

I just don't have the parameters loaded into WInISD and I keep getting floating point errors when I do try to import it. I used JL because of the few big car audio names, they actually make their own speakers and are fairly good price to quality wise. Not set on them.

Basically I'm wondering if I should put two separate chambers in that box for two 12's or two 12's in one big chamber or one 15" in one big chamber. That's all.

Wasn't set on Dayton either way, but I have the Dayton HO 10" in my truck and love the thing more than my own family. Thought maybe the quality transferred upwards into the 12's and 15's.

Regarding the power, we have that taken care of. His mechanic is upgrading the big three under the engine and he'll have two optima's. Also, he already has the amp so its not like we NEED to turn the gains up all the way. Just because he has all that power, doesn't mean he has to use it. I won't tell him that of course, but I'm pretty sure a quality designed box / sub will have his teeth rattling with that amp not even breaking a sweat.

[J_Shea]

Three of these in parallel in that new larger box using the Sundown amp gets stupid loud. Actually it gets a step beyond stupid I think, all the way to preposterous.
Eminence LAB 15

This takes three 6" diameter vents just to keep the noise within reason. This is crossed 4th order at 30Hz subsonic and 63Hz low pass. The load is 2 ohm which that amp claims to be able to deliver 800 watts into. There is enough linear excursion left that you could bridge two of those amps at a later date if 126 dB before taking cabin gain into account isn't enough...




Edit:
Also, making it sound good is as simple as plugging those enormous vents:

[Mark the Red]

Three of these in parallel in that new larger box using the Sundown amp gets stupid loud. Actually it gets a step beyond stupid I think, all the way to preposterous.
Eminence LAB 15

This takes three 6" diameter vents just to keep the noise within reason. This is crossed 4th order at 30Hz subsonic and 63Hz low pass. The load is 2 ohm which that amp claims to be able to deliver 800 watts into. There is enough linear excursion left that you could bridge two of those amps at a later date if 126 dB before taking cabin gain into account isn't enough...

Thanks. But I can't get 3 15's into that box, the woofers have to face upward. I can get one maybe two by angling the top face 30 degrees.

BTW. What software are you using to do that model?

[Mark the Red]

Btw, I just modeled the SSA Icon 12 in your box dimensions and it looks good ported to low 30s (a nice hump in the mid to upper thirties to low 40s which will make it sound louder to him - pretty common in car audio as it emphasizes the region rap tends to beat at).

Thanks. Almost ninety percent sure we'll go with these subs. Have to run it by the customer first of course .....

[J_Shea]

They can't face backwards? Hmmm. Well, 3 of the 12" Eminence LAB's should be nearly as loud in a box about 3/4 the size.

I'm using the Woofer Box and Circuit Designer spreadsheet from Charlie Laub's home page. His page is great! If you haven't checked it out yet...
http://audio.claub.net/software.html